Whiteness theory is intended to make white cultural assumptions and
privileges visible so that whites do not assume that their own position
is neutral or normal. Although in many ways consistent with the aims of
multicultural theory, whiteness theory is also distinct from multiculturalism.
Multicultural theory involves fostering an appreciation of cultures other
than the dominant culture; in its more radical forms, multiculturalism
also involves problematizing the assumptions of the dominant culture. But
because multicultural approaches are concerned with displacing white culture
from its position of dominance, they usually do not focus on whiteness
as a distinctive culture or identity. Whiteness theory focuses specifically
on whiteness as a cultural position — a position and an identity that,
to a considerable extent, are gained at the expense of people of color.

Whiteness theory is particularly important for educators, since white
cultural norms are systematically enforced (usually without any recognition
that they are white norms) in the schools. A teacher who can deconstruct
his or her own whiteness is far better positioned to see why prevailing
pedagogical and curricular patterns might not work for students. Even white
teachers who are fully committed to multiculturalism often fail to see
how their own investments in white culture as a universal culture get in
the way of their good intentions vis-a-vis students of color.

Among the topics with which the course will be concerned will be the
various analyses undertaken by whiteness theory, whiteness as epistemology,
whiteness in relation to pedagogy, whiteness in relation to texts and the
curriculum, and the politics of different approaches to whiteness education
(such as the “allies” approach).

Structure

The class will meet once a week, each time discussing the readings on
the syllabus. To participate actively in class, it is essential that you
read carefully, prepare questions, and jot down any issues you wish to
discuss. I will make short presentations to provide necessary background
information. My primary role, however, will be to ask questions, clarify
points raised in our discussions, and summarize the important issues that
we discuss.

Texts

The articles will be available for purchase as a bound collection from
Empire Publishing or in a few cases as handouts or as links on the electronic
version of the syllabus.

Course Requirements

In addition to the assigned reading, regular attendance, and participation
grounded in the readings, course requirements include several journal entries
(2-3 pages each), one short paper (5 pages), and a longer final paper (10-12
pages). You will be required to turn in a good draft of the final paper
two weeks before the final due date. There is no final exam.

Participation and attendance: 15% of grade

Journals: 20% of grade

Short Paper: 25% of grade

Final paper: 40% of grade

By the third class meeting, I would like you to have identified 4 themes
that you will be looking at throughout the readings; the four themes should
correspond to the four categories of whiteness theory (psychological/identity;
material; institutional; and discursive). Thus, for example, you might
look for how the readings speak to questions of voice or listening (psychological/identity);
health or property (material); authority or merit (institutional); and
intelligibility or vulnerability (discursive). (To some extent, themes
may cut across the categories. Merit, for example, might be understood
in terms of all four categories.)

The journal entries should be typed (double-spaced) and are to be turned
in for comments. Make your journal entries as useful as possible; this
means that you should be specific about your ideas and questions (and about
the readings) so that when you get back to them weeks later you will find
them interesting and helpful. The entries do not have to be highly crafted,
but they should not be sloppy. Use full sentences, proofread your entries,
and use language that is vivid and specific enough to invite further exploration.

You will be asked to prepare six journal assignments of 2-3 pages each,
for six different class periods. It is up to you to decide which sets of
readings you want to respond to, except that at least two journal entries
are due (and should be turned in) before the short paper. You do not need
to write about every single theme each time you choose to write, but discuss
at least two of your themes each time. Make sure that each theme gets discussed
at least twice over the course of the semester. (Some themes may get discussed
more than others.) Your journal entries do not need to include every single
one of the readings for the class session in question, but they should
take up the majority of the readings. They should grapple with and be importantly
informed by the readings; they should not just respond to them glancingly.

The journal entries will help prepare you for your final paper, which
is to take up two or more of the themes you have chosen. Thus, for example,
your final paper might explore how whiteness theories inform your understanding
of fairness (discursive category) in relation to access to well-paying
jobs (material) or, perhaps, objectivity (discursive) in relation to academic
publishing protocols (institutional). Your final paper will need to take
into account two or three outside readings in order to do justice to your
themes. However, the paper should be distinctively a paper for this course,
not a paper from another course that you have tweaked or padded with references
to the course readings. The final paper must be centrally informed
by the course readings, lectures, and discussions.

Clarifications, Cautions, and Ground Rules

For white teachers, it is important to see when and how white privilege
matters and what can be done about it. This course will ask you to look
at exactly how whiteness affects various relations and situations.
Whiteness has an enormous organizing effect on other forms of power and
privilege. Accordingly, we will be talking about how race, ethnicity, class,
gender, sexuality, and other positionalities interlock to create, maintain,
and support white privilege. You will be asked to look at the nuances of
relationships, at various privileging mechanisms, and at specific racialized
patterns; it will not be enough to talk about privilege in sweeping or
absolute terms. Thus, we will not be ranking the various kinds of privilege
and oppression but will be talking about white privilege in context. (If
you are homeless, it is not much consolation if you are a member of the
elite category of straight white males. Yet your whiteness might be relevant
to the chances of your avoiding arrest, for example.)

Whiteness theory does not address whiteness as a question of racial
guilt or innocence based on skin color but as a system of privileges that
is maintained discursively, institutionally, and materially (as well as
in other ways). What this means is that all of us are likely to participate
in maintaining the codes of whiteness in various ways. Even challenging
others to be anti-racist, depending on how it’s done, can be a way of “proving”
our own superiority and thus suggesting (for example) that we (those
of us who are white and progressive) are “good whites.” Be prepared to
rethink some of the values and practices you think of as anti-racist.

For many white teachers, whiteness as privilege is a new idea and it
is difficult to avoid being defensive. If you are new to the idea of white
privilege, try to monitor your defensiveness about whiteness; on the other
hand, if you are comfortable with talk about race privilege, remember how
complex a process the development of that awareness is and how problematic
your or anyone’s current understanding is likely to be. Also remember that
no one in academia, regardless of color, escapes whiteness altogether:
many of the values and privileges of whiteness are built into academic
discourse. If you have made it this far, you are participating in some
of the privileges of whiteness, even if you are a person of color.

I will be asking everyone to think like educators: if you feel that
you have a better or different understanding of particular materials than
do others in the class, see if you can make that understanding available
to others without lecturing them. If you feel threatened by particular
people in the class, think about how to address them so as to get past
the impasse: how can you teach them how you would like to learn from them?
Thinking as educators means attending to the conditions of learning as
well as to whether everyone is learning. This doesn’t mean that no one
can ever get angry or that everyone should always be “nice,” but it does
mean showing respect.

Regardless of your situation, it is likely that you will at times find
yourself uncomfortable with the arguments and analyses you encounter in
a course such as this, and in some cases you may find the theories intimidating.
Not only are such experiences unavoidable but they are desirable insofar
as they are part of unsettling what we think we know about ourselves and
others. It takes time and study to move beyond anxious discomfort. While
the course will not attempt to eliminate discomfort, it will try to make
your discomfort interesting.

Schedule of Class Topics and Reading

Mon. 27 Aug. IntroductionReadings:

McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”
Wildman, “Reflections on Whiteness: The Case of Latinos(as)”
Berry, “‘I Just See People’: Exercises in Learning the Effects of Racism
and Sexism”

Anderson, “How We Learn about Race through History”
Hamilton, “Revolutionary Principles and Family Loyalties: Slavery’s
Transformation in the St. George Tucker Household of Early National Virginia”
Takaki, “The Tempest in the Wilderness: The Racialization of
Savagery”
Martinez, “Mexican Americans and Whiteness”

Mon. 24 Sept. Material Whiteness TheorizingReadings:

Lipsitz, “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: Racialized
Social Democracy and the ‘White’ Problem in American Studies”
Sanchez, “Reading Reginald Denny: The Politics of Whiteness in the
Late Twentieth Century [Response to Lipsitz]”
Taylor, “The Hidden Face of Racism [Response to Lipsitz]”
Williams, “A Tragic Vision of Black Problems [Response to Lipsitz]”
Lipsitz, “Toxic Racism [Response]”

Chalmers, “White Out: Multicultural Performances in a Progressive
School”
Gilmore, Smith, and Kairaiuak, “Resisting Diversity: An Alaskan Case
of Institutional Struggle”
Larson and Ovando, The Color of Bureaucracy: The Politics of Equity
in Multicultural School Communities, ch. 3 and 4

In-class project: Bring to class an illustrated children’s book (fiction
or biography) that includes people of different races or ethnicities but
has a white person as at least one of its protagonists. The book doesn’t
necessarily have to have race as its overt topic. (The six city libraries
have good children’s book selections, or you may want to check the Marriott
Library or your school library.) We will be deconstructing whiteness in
children’s books during part of class, working in groups of two or three.

Deconstructing whiteness in children’s movies: Cinderella

Mon. 12 Nov. Preparing TeachersReadings:

King, “Dysconscious Racism: Ideology, Identity, and the Miseducation
of Teachers”
Lawrence and Tatum, “White Teachers as Allies: Moving from Awareness
to Action”
Rodriguez, “Emptying the Content of Whiteness: Toward an Understanding
of the Relation between Whiteness and Pedagogy”

Mon. 19 Nov. Whiteness and PedagogyReadings:

Hytten and Warren, “Engaging Whiteness: How Racial Power Gets
Reified in Education”
Giroux, “White Squall: Resistance and the Pedagogy of Whiteness”
Mayo, “Civility and Its Discontents: Sexuality, Race, and the Lure
of Beautiful Manners”

James Baldwin, Collected Essays[: Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows
My Name, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, The Devil Finds Work,
Other Essays], selected by Toni Morrison (New York: Library of America,
1998).

James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948-1985
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985).

James Baldwin, “On Being ‘White’ . . . and Other Lies,” in Black
on White: Black Writers on What It Means To Be White, ed. David R.
Roediger (New York: Schocken, 1998), 177-180. [orig. published in Essence
in 1984]

Bernita C. Berry, “‘I Just See People’: Exercises in Learning the Effects
of Racism and Sexism,” in Overcoming Racism and Sexism, ed. Linda
A. Bell and David Blumenfeld (Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield, 1995),
45-51. With an appendix: Marsha Houston, “Why the Dialogues Are Difficult
or 15 Ways a Black Woman Knows When a White Woman’s Not Listening” (52-55).

Kim Hall, “Learning to Touch Honestly: A White Lesbian’s Struggle with
Racism,” in Lesbian Philosophies and Cultures, ed. Jeffner Allen
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 317-26.

Phillip Hamilton, “Revolutionary Principles and Family Loyalties: Slavery’s
Transformation in the St. George Tucker Household of Early National Virginia,”
The
William and Mary Quarterly (Third Series) 55, no. 4 (October 1998):
531-56.

Noel Ignatiev, “The Point is Not to Interpret Whiteness but to Abolish
It” [a talk given at the conference “The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness,”
Berkeley, California, April 11-13, 1997], Race Traitor [online feature
articles and editorials] http://www.postfun.com/racetraitor/features/thepoint.html

Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants
and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

Robert Jensen, “More Thoughts on Why System of White Privilege Is Wrong:
Bias: After Being Criticized for His Article Last Year, the Author Ponders
More Deeply the Realities of Racism in America,” Baltimore Sun (Sunday,
July 4, 1999), Perspectives Section, 1C; search at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/whitefolo.htm

Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States:
From the 1960s to the 1980s (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1986). Revised edition: Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation
in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd ed. (New York:
Routledge, 1994).

Phyllis Palmer, Domesticity and Dirt: Housewives and Domestic Servants
in the United States, 1920-1945 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1989).

Charmaine Perkins, “Any More Colorful We’d Have to Censor It,” in Radical
In<ter>ventions: Identity, Politics, and Difference/s in Educational
Praxis, ed. Suzanne de Castell and Mary Bryson (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1997), 247-68.

David R. Roediger, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on
Race, Politics, and Working Class History (London: Verso, 1994).

David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of
the American Working Class, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1999). Revised
version of David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making
of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991).

David R. Roediger, ed., Black on White: Black Writers on What It
Means To Be White (New York: Schocken, 1998).

Christine E. Sleeter, “Multicultural Education, Social Positionality,
and Whiteness,” in Multicultural Education as Social Activism (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1996), 135-53.

Christine E. Sleeter, “Reflections on My Use of Multicultural and Critical
Pedagogy When Students Are White,” in Multicultural Education as Social
Activism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 117-34.

Christine E. Sleeter, “Resisting Racial Awareness: How Teachers Understand
the Social Order from their Social Locations,” in Multicultural Education
as Social Activism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996),
65-89.

Ronald Takaki, “The Tempest in the Wilderness: The Racialization
of Savagery,” Journal of American History 79, no. 3 (December 1992):
892-912.

Beverly Daniel Tatum, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together
in the Cafeteria?” and Other Conversations about Race (New York: Basic
Books, 1997). Also: Beverly Daniel Tatum, “Why Are All the Black Kids
Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” and Other Conversations about Race,
rev. ed. with a new introduction (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

Audrey Thompson, “A Modest Proposal for Preventing Philosophers of Education
from Being a Burden to Their Students or Their Country; and for Making
Them Beneficial to Their Publick,” Educational Foundations 12, no.
3 (Summer 1998): 67-71. Or see Audrey Thompson, “Against: Logical, linear,
analytic forms of argumentation,” Alternative session of the Philosophy
of Education Society, Boston, MA (March 1998). http://cuip.uchicago.edu/pes/debate_thompson.htm

Kathryn B. Ward, “‘Lifting as We Climb’: How Scholarship by and about
Women of Color Has Shaped My Life as a White Feminist,” in Color, Class
and Country: Experiences of Gender, ed. Gay Young and Bette J. Dickerson
(London: Zed Books, 1994), 199-217.

George Yúdice, “Neither Impugning nor Disavowing Whiteness Does a Viable
Politics Make: The Limits of Identity Politics,” in After Political
Correctness: The Humanities and Society in the 1990s, ed. Christopher
Newfield and Ronald Strickland (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), 255-85.